Last night my Twitter feed filled, briefly, with closely cropped images of protestors in V for Vendetta/Guy Fawkes masks making some noise outside the Houses of Parliament and comments criticising the BBC for not covering what was, obviously, an epoch-making event[ref]Of course the BBC did cover the demonstration – but this was considered insufficient[/ref]. I […]
Adam Roberts has written a (typically) interesting blog post about the division between the “Booker culture” that favours formally complex and “clever, clever” writing and the popular arts that have set “the parameters of the Great Human Revolution of 1950-2020”. You need to read his post to get the full force of his argument but, […]
I’m a strong supporter of Labour’s links with trade unions and the work of unions in general. I’ve worked for two different unions (more than ten years, in total) and the first thing I do in a new workplace is dig out the details of the recognised trade union – not always an easy job […]
The blurb in the back of The New Few (or a Very British Oligarchy) by Ferdinand Mount (Simon & Schuster, 2012) rather modestly describes the author as a former columnist for The Spectator, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times, editor of the TLS and former head of the Downing Street Policy Unit. What it omits is […]
So last night I finally got around to watching Richard II, the first play in the Hollow Crown season currently running on BBC One. It was, I thought, a very strong production of what is quite a difficult play – lacking as it does an easily sympathetic protagonist and realistically portraying politics as a complex, […]
Dan Ariely is probably the best known voice in the popularization of behavioural economics. Behavioural economics represents the most significant challenge to the ideas of classical economic theorists built around notions of more-or-less perfectly rational individuals who calculate and diligently pursue narrow profit maximisation. Building on the insights of behavioural psychology – especially in its […]
Michael J Sandel opens What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) with a list (3-5) of some novel items that can be bought: In California prisoners can pay $82 a night for better, quieter cells. $8 to drive alone in a car pool lane during rush hour in […]
I want to start this post by saying plainly that I believe that it is possible for writers to create important and insightful work about cultures to which they do not belong. There is a somewhat crude (but, it seems to me, increasingly common) form of postcolonial criticism – often proceeding from a partial, or […]
Robert Reich has been banging on about the risks to advanced economies of increasing levels of inequality for longer than most. The Work of Nations (published in 1991 and the book that got him headhunted by Bill Clinton’s campaign and, eventually, appointed as US Secretary of Labor) set out pretty accurately how the “global” economy […]
I am slightly worried, given the brightly coloured cover of this book and the snappy title (screaming exclamation mark and all), that Paul Krugman’s End This Depression Now! (Melrose Road Partners, 2012) is going to end up in the hands of a lot of disappointed people looking for a quick fix for the their mental […]